1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sheet winch for marine use, and more particularly to an improvement of an automatically meshing sheet winch having a rope-meshing grooved pulley formed at one end of a winch drum thereof for preventing a rope wound on the winch drum from slipping and a rope guide for guiding the rope between the grooved pulley and the winch drum.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A typical automatically meshing sheet winch of the prior art comprises a fixed base having a fixed hollow cylinder, a winch drum rotatably carried by the hollow cylinder, a main shaft rotatably fitted in the hollow cylinder, a reduction gear disposed between the main shaft and the winch drum, and a rope guide fixed to the hollow cylinder. As the main shaft is turned by a suitable handle, the winch drum is rotated through the reduction gear, so that a rope can be wound on or paid out from the winch drum while being guided by the rope guide.
The automatically meshing sheet winch of the prior art has drawbacks in that the winch drum is driven only through the reduction gear, so that to provide a high-speed winding of the rope, the reduction gear should have a reduction ratio close to direct driving, resulting in a complicated structure of the reduction gear because reduction ratios for slow rope winding are indispensable even when the high-speed winding is provided. The complicated structure inevitably causes the sheet winch to become large and costly. Besides, the rope guide of the sheet winch of the prior art is fixed to the hollow cylinder integral with the base of the winch, and the angular position of the rope guide relative to the base of the winch is hard to modify.